I noted below how AP and WaPo completely ran with Senate Republicans’ absurd claim that Biden somehow double-crossed them. Politico Playbook did pretty much the same thing, though in Playbook argot. But Politico itself, or the regular edit team published the first account of what happened here that more or less captured what happened. Republicans woke up Friday angry about what they’d agreed to Thursday. And their best argument, to the extent they had one, is that Biden said too clearly what they knew and what they had just agreed to.
Here’s the flavor.
Headline: GOP infrastructure negotiators fume over Biden’s handling of their deal
Subhed: It took less than 24 hours for Democrats’ planned “two-track” strategy to rile up Republicans.
Lede:
Senate Republicans who negotiated an infrastructure deal with President Joe Biden celebrated Thursday, then woke up angry on Friday.
The five GOP senators who cut a deal with moderate Democrats and the president are frustrated that Biden explicitly tied his signature on a bipartisan infrastructure bill to a separate Democrats-only measure, according to three Republican aides familiar with the dynamics. Biden has long said he wants to push forward both measures together, but Republicans viewed his Thursday comment as openness to vetoing the very same bill he’d just endorsed.
Not how I would have captured it precisely. But it captures more or less the reality of what we all saw with our own eyes.
